“Tree planting and videoconferencing are complementary, says Mark Salter of Questmark. “Both offer valuable environmental benefits as videoconferencing eliminates much business travel thereby reducing an organisation’s carbon footprint. ‘Trees 4 Business’, on the other hand, recognises that some travel is unavoidable and enables companies to offset a proportion of their carbon emissions.”
According to Carbon Managers, a single tree can absorb a tonne of CO2 during its lifetime, while a single trip by car of 200 miles can result in the emission of over 80 kilograms of CO2*, an environmental impact avoided if videoconferencing is used instead.
The ‘Trees 4 Business’ initiative is one of a series of measures being undertaken by Questmark to meet their long-term environmental objectives. The company is, for example, working to the BS 8555 Environmental Management Systems standard. Apart from stricter housekeeping to reduce energy usage and recycle more waste material, Questmark are using their vehicles smarter by ensuring, where possible, that journeys by their engineers cover more than one job or delivery.